If your organization uses a customer relations management (CRM) system to manage certain tasks, you can forward Gmail to your CRM to create a case or ticket. A CRM system is software that helps people and organizations handle their interactions and relationships with customers and users. Some popular CRMs include Salesforce, ZenDesk, HubSpot, and Jira.
CRMs are often used to manage sales leads and support tickets. For example, you can forward messages sent to your sales address to a CRM to create, qualify, and convert leads. Or you may want to forward messages sent to a help address to a CRM, to start a support case workflow. This process is sometimes called Email to case.
Best practices for creating CRM cases with Gmail
Gmail isn’t intended to replace large-scale ticketing systems. If your organization needs support for large-scale operations, for example enterprise sales or support, we recommend using a dedicated CRM.
Step 1. Get your forwarding and receiving addresses
To forward messages to a CRM system, you need the email address that will be forwarded and the CRM address you’ll forward to.
Note: The email addresses used in this article are examples. Replace them with your own Google Workspace and CRM email addresses.
Create your Google Workspace forwarding address
Decide on the email address that you’ll forward, for example: [email protected].
Important: This email should not be a real account in Google Workspace. It will exist only in the Default routing rule you'll create in Step 2 to set up forwarding.
Verify the CRM receiving address
To get the CRM email address that will get forwarded messages, refer to the documentation for your CRM. Terms used to describe this email address include support address and Email to case.
Some CRMs generate a unique email address that corresponds with the CRM support address. In this case, use the unique address when you set up forwarding. For example, if the CRM support address is [email protected], your CRM system might generate a unique, random address such as [email protected]. Use this unique address when you set up forwarding, in Step 2.
Step 2. Set up Gmail to forward messages to the CRM
To forward messages to your CRM system, follow these steps to set up a Default routing rule. In the steps below, incoming messages addressed to [email protected] are forwarded to [email protected].
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Sign in to your Google Admin console.
Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).
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In the Admin console, go to Menu
Apps
Google Workspace
- On the left, select the top-level organizational unit.
Note: You can only select the top-level organization unit when the Default routing setting is located on the Advanced settings page.
- Click Configure to set up Default routing. Or, to add a new default routing rule, click Add another rule.
- In the Add setting box, take these steps:
Setting options What to do Specify envelope recipients to match Select Single recipient and enter the email address that you established in Step 1. This is the address that your users or customers send messages to, for example, [email protected].
Important: Be sure this email address you is not an actual Google Workspace account. It shouldn't have an associated user account, mailbox, or Groups membership. To support delivery of large volumes of outgoing mail, the email address should exist only in this Default routing rule.
If the envelope recipient matches the above, do the following - Envelope recipient: Check the Change envelope recipient box, then select the Replace recipient option. Enter the CRM support address you verified in Step 1, for example [email protected]. If your CRM generated a random address from the support address, enter that instead.
- Spam: (Optional) To let Gmail reroute messages marked as spam, check the Bypass spam filter... box. By default, routing rules don't reroute messages marked as spam. Gmail classifies incoming messages as spam before they're delivered to recipients.
- Also deliver to: (Optional) To forward the message to more email addresses, check the Add more recipients box. Then click Add to enter the email addresses. For example, you might want to send a copy of CRM messages to your sales team, or to yourself.
Note: Additional recipients might get messages after the CRM gets them. Learn more at Gmail receiving rate limits in Google Workspace.
Options Select the option Perform this action on non-recognized and recognized addresses.
- At the bottom of the Add setting box, click Save.
- Check that your new routing rule appears in the Default routing table.
Changes can take up to 24 hours but typically happen more quickly. Learn more
Step 3. Verify forwarding and case creation
To check that your messages are forwarded correctly, send an email to the forwarding email address, for example [email protected]. Then verify your CRM system received the message and created a case or ticket from the message.
